Monday, 31 March 2014

REVIEW: Urban Decay Naked 3 Palette + Swatches

Yes, it happened! I was a very, very lucky lady at my 21st birthday last month, because one of my beautiful best friends who had been travelling around America decided to spoil me... with the stunning, sostunningIcan'tevenarticulatemyself, Urban Decay Naked 3 eyeshadow palette!

Bask in it's beauty. I'm pretty much bowing down right now.

Gosh, it's just so pretty! The twelve rose-gold inspired shades are absolutely gorgeous and very different from the warm tones of the Naked 1 and the cooler shades of the Naked 2.

I'm already a proud owner of the Urban Decay Naked 2, so to now have the Naked 3 in my life makes me feel very spoiled indeed. Thank you so much Ally for the super thoughtful present!

Anyway, enough of me going around in circles about how much I love this palette and let's get straight into the review!

Review: Urban Decay Naked 3 Palette

Packaging

The palette is encased in a textured metal tin, similar to the Naked 2, which is great for traveling as the hard exterior helps to protect the product inside. I would still recommend being pretty careful with it though, I dropped my Naked 2 palette which shattered the shade Blackout, meaning I had black pigment all over my other shadows -_-'

The case reminds me of the pencil tins you use in primary school (did you ever have one?) and it snaps shut which is great! Inside, there's a large horizontal mirror that's great for touch ups during the day or doing your makeup on the go. Plus there's also a little section for the double-ended shadow brush that comes with the palette.

Added extras

In typical Naked palette fashion, the Naked 3 also comes with a few freebies (the original Naked palette comes with a full size of the Urban Decay Primer Potion and the Naked 2 comes with a dual-ended brush and a lip gloss). With the Naked 3, you also receive a sample of each of the Urban Decay Primer Potions in Original, Eden, Sin and Anti-Aging. You get a week's worth of each sample and they all come in individual little pouches.

You also receive the same dual-ended brush that comes with the Naked 2, which is awesome because it's one of the loveliest eyeshadow brushes I've ever tried! One end is a flat, wide shader brush which is great for patting the pigment on and layering colours, and the other end is a rounded blending brush, for (you guessed it!) blending your colours together for a seamless gradient.

Left: the flat shader end.Right: the rounded blending end.

Colour range & pigmentation

The Naked 3 boasts a stunning array of rosy gold shades and a combination of matte and shimmery shades. There are more shimmery shades than matte, though that's fine in my opinion because Urban Decay's shimmery shades are just so gorgeous! But I love that both types are included so you can get a subtle, contoured eye look for day and a wowza shimmering look for night.

There are six lighter shades and six darker shades and all of them are very strongly pigmented, though there are some that pop more than others. My favourite colours from the Naked 3 are Dust (a sparkly pink that would look ah-mazing applied wet), Liar (a very metallic bronze), Factory (a deep chocolate brown, which is easily the most pigmented of the palette) and Blackheart (a black shadow with a subtle hint of fine pink glitter).

Price

For all of my overseas friends, you can get one of these for yourself for $50USD at Sephora, but my Aussie babes will have to purchase online. I've seen it on BosaBeauty.com for $66 (although it's currently sold out) and they ship to Australia.

While $50 upwards is a lot of money to spend on one makeup product, when you consider the amazing quality of these eye shadows, the sturdy and stylish packaging and the number of shadows you get in the palette, it suddenly looks very affordable! To me, it's completely worth it!

Have you tried any of the Urban Decay Naked palettes? If so, which one is your favourite? And if not, which palette are you lusting after the most? Let me know in the comments below!